Responsive Day Out

December 6th, 2012

Any announcement that begins with “I’m really excited to announce…” usually doesn’t end well. It often means that some startup or product has been bought by Facebook, Twitter or Google. But with that in mind…

I’m really excited to announce… I’m putting on a new event.

It’s called Responsive Day Out and it will take place in the Corn Exchange in Brighton on Friday, March 1st, 2013.

It’s a kind of conference, I guess, but I think of it as more like a gathering of like-minded people getting together to share what they’ve learned, show some examples, swap techniques, and discuss problems. And all of it will be related to responsive web design.

The format will be fun. There’ll be a block of three quickfire talks, just 15 to 20 minutes long, followed by a combined discussion hosted by yours truly, when I’ll be marshalling questions from the audience. We’ll have four of those blocks: two in the morning and two in the afternoon, with each block separated by a break.

I’m really looking forward to trying out this format. I think it’s going to be nice and zippy, with plenty of good solid practical lessons.

There are many different kinds of conferences. There are the big events like UX London with three days of talks and workshops. By the way, tickets for this year’s events went on sale this week—just check out that line-up of speakers! Grab yourself a ticket …or rather, convince your boss to grab you a ticket because, let’s face it, an intensive three-day event like UX London is the kind of thing that requires a training budget.

It’s a very different beast to dConstruct, which remains an affordable “big picture” event despite its stellar line-up of international speakers. I wish it could be cheaper, but there are certain unavoidable costs in any event: venue hire, speaker payment, travel and accommodation—it all adds up.

Then you’ve got the grassroots events like Barcamps and meetups, which ideally are free to attend, with costs covered by sponsorships.

I wish I could make Responsive Day Out a free event but putting it on in the Corn Exchange means there will be costs involving venue hire, lighting and projection. That said, I’ve done my best to keep the event as affordable as possible so…

There will be no lanyards. You’ll just get a sticker or a stamp on your hand or something similarly lo-tech.

There is no branding to speak of. The website is a simple one-page affair that Paul and I whipped up in a day or two. There will be no banners on stage or in the foyer. There isn’t even a logo.

There are no speakers from overseas. This makes quite a big differences to the travel expenses—this is one of the reasons why dConstruct and Ampersand necessarily cost more.

Perhaps most importantly, the speakers are very generously donating their time and considerable knowledge to this event.

Unless some generous company wants to step up with sponsorship, there will be no after-party or pre-party. If you know of a generous company who would enjoy the undying gratitude of 300 web designers and developers by putting on either a pre- or after-party, please, please get in touch.

So please keep your expectations in check. This will not be a polished event like Build or dConstruct and it might feel a little provincial with its entirely UK-based speaker line-up but hey, fifty quid! Not bad, right?

With that in mind, if you have any interest at all in the design and development challenges involved in building responsive websites, you should grab a ticket and come along to the Responsive Day Out.